Afghanistan - A Survivor's Tale

Broadcast: 27/05/2008

Reporter: Mark Corcoran

Transcript

CORCORAN: For twenty years, internationally acclaimed photographer Stephen Dupont, has been framing up the world’s conflicts through a viewfinder, but there’s one special place that holds him mesmerised – Afghanistan. Since his first trip there fifteen years ago, he’s been captivated by the spirit of ordinary Afghans, who remain defiant despite decades of war and suffering.

STEPHEN DUPONT: There’s no other people in the world like them. You know they’re, they’re just, they’re absolutely unique. They’re hard and they’re honest and there’s this incredible richness to their culture. There’s just something about the mix of all the tribes and ethnicities. It’s just a wonderful, rich kind of experience just to be around them.

CORCORAN: He was there on the front line for the US led invasion that deposed the Taliban in 2001 but the swift victory soon gave way to the frustration and bitterness of insurgency. Stephen Dupont’s controversial images of American soldiers burning the bodies of dead Taliban fighters were beamed around the world.

For many Afghans, life went from bad to worse. Some seeking solace in the fatal embrace of opium and heroin, documented in Stephen Dupont’s Foreign Correspondent story The Brothers of Kabul. Their addiction an apt metaphor for Afghanistan’s decline into a virtual narco state.

The nation has been swamped by the production of opium and heroin that not only bankrolls the Taliban insurgency, but corrupts much of the US sponsored government.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Afghanistan supplies over 90% of the world’s heroin. Farmers are making money, drug lords are making money – it’s a lot of money. They’re making a lot of money. The Taliban are financing the war from the sale of poppy.

CORCORAN: After the 2001 invasion, American troops ignore the opium poppies in their pursuit of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters but they did so at their own peril. Amid predictions of a bumper opium crop this year, the Afghan Government claimed a great victory in poppy eradication.

STEPHEN DUPONT: What I really wanted to focus on this trip was to get in and have a look at the poppy fields, to have a look at the cultivation and to focus on the eradication.

CORCORAN: Stephen Dupont teamed up with another Australian, journalist Paul Raffaele, a writer for the US magazine The Smithsonian. Together they joined a heavily armed Afghan Police poppy eradication team in the eastern city of Jalalabad.

STEPHEN DUPONT: This truck arrived with about, God sixty or seventy Afghans just like sardines crammed into the back of this small truck that would carry cement or something like that. We found out later that they were going to be the labour to do the actual destruction of the poppies.

So we drove out of Jalalabad and I think we were sort of heading southeast. We weren’t told where we were going, all we knew was that we were going to be taken on an eradication and so the feeling was very up, the mood was good. You know I got a pretty good sense of security from these guys. Like I’d been going there for fifteen years, you know I’ve been hanging out with a lot of Afghans and I got no sense that something was wrong. So nothing seemed to be out of order and both Paul and I were pretty… pretty excited and happy to be there and we were really looking forward to actually getting out there and seeing… you know, seeing what they were doing.

CORCORAN: Their convoy tracked past the gaze of an American surveillance blimp tethered high above a US outpost but the balloons powerful cameras like much of the US high tech arsenal, was unable to detect or prevent what was about to unfold.

STEPHEN DUPONT: We arrived in a town and at the time I didn’t know the name of the place. We drove in. It was just one road with typical Afghan market stalls on each side and shops, restaurants and things and our vehicle pulled up very close to the entrance to the Police barracks. Some other policemen who were from the barracks had come out and they’d met them and there was this sort of very typical Afghan meet and greet kind of thing going on and we thought nothing of it.

And so I sat inside the car and Paul came and joined me and we were both sitting there. He had his door closed and my door was open to get air and I was smoking a cigarette and we were talking. And then I started just showing Paul how to use my video camera because I was hoping that he might be able to shoot some video while I shot stills and stuff like that, so we were just shooting the breeze and then you know bang! You know massive, massive explosion. You know, it was just this, from what I remember, just a really loud bang and then darkness and silence for a little while. I just remember this calmness after the bang and the blackness and then I heard gunfire. It was the gunfire that made me come to my senses.

CORCORAN: Amid the chaos, the Taliban ambushed the survivors who desperately fought off the attack.

STEPHEN DUPONT: So I started taking pictures of the guys that were all around me and they were taking cover so in the pictures you will see the guys actually kind of hunkered down and trying to avoid the gunfire. My reaction was to go in and take pictures and then I hesitated thinking well what if there’s a second explosion as I know that… that happens you know? They wait for the rescue party to come in and get the wounded and the bodies and they explode another bomb and so I was really kind of you know tormented about this sort of feeling of another explosion.

[In Afghanistan] We left Jalalabad about an hour ago. It’s about ten thirty in the morning and there’s been a suicide bombing here. You can see the carnage behind me. I was very close to the actual bombing and all I remember is an incredibly loud explosion and I was sitting in the vehicle, in one of the police vehicles, and now the carnage is all around. There’s probably fifteen or twenty bodies here. It definitely looks like it’s a suicide bombing. We were about to go on a mission to eradicate the poppy fields and, and this is what’s happened. As you can see it’s chaotic and I’m not even sure how badly wounded I am except I know I’m talking and I’m on camera, but I definitely need to get checked up as well.

[Studio] And then I thought of Paul. I thought my God you know this is the first time that, that Paul had come into my head. I’d just realised that he wasn’t with me. You know I just thought where the hell is Paul? I went straight to the car and I saw Paul sitting still where he was, where I’d left him. Blood all over him and in shock I guess, like I was, and I said to Paul I said look just… just… you’ll be okay. I was you know consoling him and saying look you’re okay, you’re okay, you know I’ll get you out. We’ll get out of here soon. I looked to my right and there was a policeman directly by my feet dead and then the whole side of our car that we were sitting in was just covered with shrapnel holes and then I said to Paul I’ll be back soon and I actually went and took pictures and it was almost like I was on autopilot. I was quite surprised that this one guy was actually sitting alive in this you know absolute mess of human remains.

[In Afghanistan] I’m a photographer you know and I just sort of guess this is all part of what I’m doing here in Afghanistan but you know the carnage back there was so horrific that I don’t know man, I mean I just, I just don’t know what I’m doing anymore. I don’t know whether I should be photographing that or what. You know I felt like I was just on autopilot and then I was just gathering evidence or something but I don’t know I just, I’m just questioning everything at the moment now, you know?

CORCORAN: It’s a terrible, terrible situation to be in and you faced the dilemma, the choice that many media workers face in that situation, do you keep filming, do you keep recording, or do you put down your cameras and your notepads and help?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yeah.

CORCORAN: Why did you decide to keep filming?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Look I don’t know. I think, I think there are those who help and there are those who… who take pictures and I’m not in Afghanistan to…. oh it’s probably going to sound bad but no, I’m mean I’m a journalist, I’m a photographer, you know? I’m in Afghanistan to, to work and to you know to cover a story and you know if, if a news-breaking story happens or if something happens like this suicide bombing then I think my natural instincts are there to cover the things happening in front of me.

[Afghanistan] I’m not sure why I’m filming this. This is just the worst thing I’ve ever seen.

[Studio] There were a lot of people helping. There are a lot of Afghans there helping the wounded. I didn’t feel that putting down my cameras and joining them to pull out the wounded and to throw the dead on the back of the trucks was useful.

CORCORAN: But when Stephen Dupont paused in his grisly task, he realised that Paul Raffaele was not where he’d left him. He’s disappeared.

STEPHEN DUPONT: My partner, my colleague Paul Raffaele I’ve lost, who I’m working with for the Smithsonian and I’ve got to go and try to find him. He was looking a bit worse than I was. I think he was on the other side of the door where the impact was so I just pray that he’s okay. It’s absolutely chaotic here at the moment and yeah I don’t know, I think I’m just in shock. Jesus!


Yeah. I just want to find my friend. My…

AFGHAN MAN: Your friend has go to hospital.

STEPHEN DUPONT: He’s gone to the… is there a hospital here?

AFGHAN MAN: No, no. To…

STEPHEN DUPONT: To the American base?

AFGHAN MAN: Yeah, yeah to the American base.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Okay so we need to go to the American base and I need to find him. So I think that’s the best thing to do.

CORCORAN: With Taliban still in the area, he was left with no choice but to make the long dangerously exposed walk back through town to the nearest American outpost.

STEPHEN DUPONT: I don’t know why I do this job. Fucking suicide bombers! Jesus Christ I’m so lucky. I feel really lucky. I just feel so lucky. I’ve got a daughter back home and a partner, I’ve family but I just can’t help feeling for the people that I’ve just been filming and photographing you know? It’s like fifteen bodies, there’s fifteen people killed including a young child. It was just horrible. Just horrible.

CORCORAN: It was later reported that the suicide bomber was a twelve-year-old boy selling newspapers. The attack killed about twenty-five people, wounding scores more. Many injured were taken to the nearby American compound. After an anxious search, Stephen Dupont eventually found Paul Raffaele alive but in bad shape at another American base. He was stabilised, then flown to a US military hospital.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Paul was on the right side of me so I was sitting right next to him and he was on the side of the blast so he took the full force of the blast and sheltered me, in fact saved me from receiving shrapnel. He took all the shrapnel up his arm and his shoulders and the lower part of his head. I was sitting at the American military base in Bagram on the day of the explosion even, couldn’t really work out you know not only am I alive, I’m hardly scratched you know? I mean I got a couple of cuts on my head but nothing serious enough to even sort of warrant, some medical attention really. It just felt crazy.

I just didn’t get that I’d survived this. I mean we were five metres from the blast. You know I can see it in the footage, we’re five metres, we’re right there. You know both of us, both Paul and I should be dead. You know the law of average… and I saw, I saw what it did to those people.

CORCORAN: Afghans have a great warrior tradition of fighting face to face. They take great pride and almost a perverse honour in the way they fight.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yeah, absolutely.

CORCORAN: How does suicide bombing fit in with that culture?

STEPHEN DUPONT: It doesn’t fit in at all, not one bit. Suicide bombings have never been a part of Afghan culture. You know, even you know… you’ve seen suicide bombings in other cultures but never in Afghanistan and it’s only since 2001 that suicide bombings have come to Afghanistan.

And they’re on the increase. They’re on the increase big time. Why are they there? Why are people blowing themselves up in Afghanistan today? Well, I think they’re seeing what’s going on in Iraq. Suicide bombings for the resistance there have been incredibly successful I suppose, when you consider the amount of people that have been killed by suicide bombers. You know it’s a message to say we can send someone in and we can have a human time bomb, it’s a very powerful message and the reason they’re using this is because they cannot fight in a conventional way. They don’t have the numbers. They can’t go up against the Americans, they can’t even go up against the Afghans and fight in what was in the past in Afghanistan, a more traditional way of fighting.

CORCORAN: But it’s also a message to journalists, to people in the media.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Absolutely.

CORCORAN: Keep out.

STEPHEN DUPONT: It’s a total message you know and they are targeting us.

CORCORAN: So what happens if the journalists, the photographers, the cameramen just don’t go out there anymore?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Well then there’s no story, then there’s no… you know, then we can’t bring back the message. You know we can’t… we can’t tell the story because you wont be able to - there won’t be a story to cover. So you know it’s, it’s going to have a negative effect.

CORCORAN: Of course this raises the controversial issue of the media embedding with Western military forces. It’s seen as a safer option.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yes.

CORCORAN: You’ve embedded with US and UK forces in Afghanistan.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yes.

CORCORAN: You’ve also spent many years operating independently of those forces, what are your views on embedding now given this latest experience?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Well look I think, I think the whole embedding thing is sort of something you take or you leave you know? I think it can be useful. I think in a situation like Iraq where it’s almost impossible to go out and cover the conflict or the story there without being embedded. You really have no choice. Do I like it? No. I’d much rather be able to cover both sides of the story.

In Afghanistan it’s kind of the same situation in many ways where you’re with the Americans or you’re with NATO or you’re with the Afghans. You’re not with the Taliban, so you know you’re really getting one side of the story. It’s certainly still the safer option. I think if you go out on your own, then you risk so many other things that can happen. You know you risk having an interpreter or a fixer that is not trustworthy for instance and will sell you to the highest bidder. There’s so many other things. You risk roadblocks. You know, unless you take your own private army, you know forget about it.

CORCORAN: Two weeks after the bombing and Stephen Dupont is back in Sydney.
[Stephen and Paul meet/greet] Paul Raffaele has made a remarkable recovery and has just been released from hospital.

PAUL RAFFAELE: It’s fantastic to be home huh?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Oh look tell me about it.

PAUL RAFFAELE: Oh sit down here mate.

CORCORAN: It’s a time to reflect and ponder the variables that saved their lives, that claimed so many others.

PAUL RAFFAELE: It’s only two weeks ago that it happened. I have no memory of it whatsoever and I’m not going to watch your film.

STEPHEN DUPONT: No?

PAUL RAFFAELE: I’ve decided not to watch your film of the bodies because…

STEPHEN DUPONT: I don’t think you should watch it. I don’t think you need….

PAUL RAFFAELE: There’ll be faces there that I recognise, policemen that I mucked around with, danced Afghan style while we were waiting and so on, I don’t want to see them in that condition and so I’ve decided that I won’t watch that film.

The head injury… there are two areas where the shrapnel went into the back and the shrapnel’s in the brain, three pieces but I’ve seen a neurosurgeon and he said it’s a relatively benign path that it took and so I can expect almost a complete recovery. I almost have that at the moment. Just last night on BBC I heard there was another suicide bombing down in the west.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Oh really?

PAUL RAFFAELE: And seven people dead. A woman in a burka. Afghans live with this every day mate!

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yeah I know.

PAUL RAFFAELE: Whereas you and I can, you know I can be medivaced out and I can think well maybe I won’t go back there for another year or two and you come home, but they’re with the threat every day.

STEPHEN DUPONT: What I did see in the aftermath was the body of a young child and it was a boy but whether that child was the suicide bomber I can’t tell but it’s possible.

PAUL RAFFAELE: It brings home to you this fact that…

STEPHEN DUPONT: Well, using kids mate.

PAUL RAFFAELE: They can’t even secure with sixty heavily armed special-forces police and commanders. They were all around us do you remember?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Hm mm.

PAUL RAFFAELE: And we went on to the police base where there was even more security.

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yep, yep.

PAUL RAFFAELE: And yet they still couldn’t secure that place from the suicide bomber. What does that mean? You ask the question don’t you? What happens when the allies leave whether it’s next year, five years, ten years – it seems to me that’s it, you know?

CORCORAN: Around the world last year, one hundred and seventy one journalists, cameramen and photographers were killed doing an increasingly dangerous job. Most of their deaths were well documented but nobody’s exactly sure how many Afghans are dying in the suicide attacks. Bearing witness to the ongoing tragedy of Afghanistan is a deadly affair.

Are you going to go back?

STEPHEN DUPONT: Yeah I, I really don’t know, you know I don’t know. I’ve been asking that question as well. I don’t know. It’s a war, Afghanistan’s a war and you know, like an American soldier said to me at Jalalabad air base as I walked off, with all blood coming off me, he just looked at me and said ‘war is hell’. And I said ‘yep, got it. It is’.